Curiosity Experiments

Engel brought a “curiosity box” into classrooms, telling students they were free to explore it however they’d like. The box had lots of drawers and doo-dads for kids to fiddle with.

In some classes, students jumped up, started touching the box, playing with the various parts, and discussing it with each other.

In other classes, the kids just sat there. They didn’t seem to know how to interact with the box.

Engel says these reactions weren’t correlated with age or demographics, but rather with the teacher’s own attitudes and behaviors. Some teachers had created classrooms with a culture of curiosity, and others had a culture of sitting quietly (…or else).

How would your students react to an opportunity to explore a mystery?

Round Two

Engel did another experiment. She had one teacher and one student at a time conduct a scientific experiment involving a raisin getting dunked in a solution.